Our last moment together, before I couldn't bear to watch her go farther, was a moment after the seizure that took her to the hospital, after she'd spoken or tried to speak her last words. I knelt by her bed at Hospice, caressed her delicate hand, and said I love you, Grandma. She nodded. Because of course she knew, our bond secured from the day I was born.
I've written about her in more ways than I remembered, in poems and essays trying to capture her story, her spirit, her home. These are a few poems that should speak for themselves, because I can't write anything new yet. I can't write as if she's gone.
Thank You
Lively embarkings
down your driveways,
flimsy grasps for fingers,
limitless: dry goods
displayed in the nook,
naughty flirtations drink
your savings and non-sins,
silly kittens with gum
for eyes, ceilings sag
rain and mold over taught
sheets, silkless drapes
conduct neighbor ramblings,
his winter shorts and orange
shaved legs, dangling
love--your pearlescent
beads, mis-shaped vases:
you could wear white
hair and I'll adore you no
less.
Mariposa, Once
And
now, with his Ford permanently
parked,
his Veteran flag framed
on
your dresser, his cats begging
milk
from some other front porch, you go
back
to Rockhampton. But not on The Mariposa.
You're
the only war-bride
sailing
not through seas but skies to find
the
white corner ranch, the lopsided
outhouse,
even to scream, feel
a
spotted toad slick
over
toes like it used to--
but
you’ve kept his name. You have forgotten
the
sound of your mother's goodnight under
his
whiskered licks of your ear. Queensland can’t
reclaim
you. Only select words lack R's
as
always. Absent R’s in a kitchen
stocked
with food of your choice alone. Absent
R
leather-stitched
on the belt he wore
when
he died and dropped
your
accent into your trunk of possessions and
locked
it.
